Emission - play reading at the Village Playwrights

Description

My play "Emission" will have its first public reading at the Village Playwrights group, in New York's Greenwich Village. The evening starts at 8 pm.

Gathering a great cast for this first public look at this play I've been working on. Here's the synopsis:

Ted is a 58 year-old environmental scientist who has invented a very simple manner of helping solve the issue of rising CO2 emissions: make them visible. Responding to the fact that their invisibility makes it difficult for most people to appreciate how damning are their actions (driving cars, using lots of electricity etc.), Ted invented a simple, harmless and very inexpensive additive, which when put in gasoline will make all CO2 emissions visible as a sickly gray smoke.

Amy, the legislative aid to the a State Senator who is trying to marshal a bill through committee forcing New York State gas stations to use the additive, is not only helping Ted, but secretly in love with him. However, her friend, Katy (who also happens to be Amy’s lover), has been paid off by the evil lobbyist Heather to spy on Ted and Amy, and figure out how to squash the bill. Heather is both paying Katy and forcing her to have sex with the her.

Heather catches up with Amy and assures that Ted’s additive will kill hundreds of jobs around the country by raising the cost of gasoline a few tenths of a cent per gallon. She also contends that people just don’t want to see all of that dirt. She also is secretly in love with Amy, due to Amy’s sense of righteousness, sacrifice and passion.

She find Ted, threatens him and then rapes him. He submits. She assures him that everything is exactly as it should be, and the coming climate disaster is nothing but another natural disaster, much like the meteor in the Yucatan or the great volcano, both of which caused extinction events of up to 95% of the world’s species. We (humans) must prepare for the coming Armageddon, which is natural, not attempt to stop it.

Heather goes into therapy, explains herself to her therapist and then is overcome by her libidinal urges, demanding that the doctor fuck her “like an animal.” “I only have a master’s degree,” he replies. But it will have to do.

In the end, all four decide on their own to go visit the State Senator, with their own personal goals. One by one they filter into the elevator to go to her fourth floor office and wait until the morning, when the senator will arrive for the new day’s work.

The elevator will not move. They stand uncomfortably, thrown together in some liminal space and stuck in a time that will not advance.